Have you ever noticed that all flying music is in 3/4 time? Or in some other multiple of three, like 6/8, 9/4, or triplet groupings? Okay, I hadn’t either. But it’s true. And I don’t just mean the early 20th-century waltz, Come Josephine in My flying Machine. Ever since inventors began focusing on heavier-than-air machines in the 19th century, classical composers have seized upon that three-beat pulse to illustrate flight.
Take the first flyers, the angels: German/American composer Paul Hindemith composed an “Angel Concert” in the first part of his symphony Mathis der Maler. It rolls along like a slow motion sea shanty in the heavens. His angels are in no hurry.
Example from Mathis der Maler.
What about another kind of heavenly traveler? Gustav Holst depicted Mercury, the winged messenger, in his suite The Planets, with fleet, gossamer arpeggios:
Example from Mercury, The Planets.
Later, he gives the sky god Zeus -- well, he called him by his Roman name Jupiter -- He gives Jupiter two 3/4 melodies, one exuberant, the other solemn.
Two examples from Jupiter, The Planets.
Richard Strauss portrayed the demented knight Don Quixote, as he fancied himself flying through the air on a magic horse. Although the score says we’re in a very slow 8/4, you’d never know by all the upwarad-climbing triplets. Notice some Hollywood special effects here: a wind machine.
Don Quixote example
And speaking of Hollywood, John William’s flying bicycle in E.T. is set in a stately three beat measure, propelled along by whirling eighth-notes.
Music from E.T.
We heard angels a while back; what about witches? Two pieces jump to mind: Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre, and the final movement of Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique. Both are in three-rhythms, of course. Listen to Berlioz’s witches:
Example Symphonie Fantastique.
Flying characters have inspired other musical forms. Marc Blitztein, who co-wrote “Mack the Knife,” composed an cantata about Icarus and his doomed flight. The conductor-composer Igor Markevitch wrote a ballet about the same. But maybe the most outlandish piece of musical theatrics comes from the late Karlheinz Stockhausen. His opera “Wednesday from Light” asks for a string quartet to go aloft during the performance, each member in his own helicopter, communicating via video monitor. Don’t ask me about seating arrangements for the cellist, but here’s the sound:
Excerpt from Stockhausen’s Helicopter String Quartet
So why three, instead of two or four, for flying music? Four conjures up images of rectangles, quadrangles, solid earth-bound things. Two beats per bar is the tempo of marches, feet firmly on the ground. But three is triangular, the gestalt of geese in flight or of airplanes in formation. It flows. It has lift.
Maybe Richard Wagner takes the prize for evocative flying music. You might see where we're going with this. But notice something very clever. We all know the sound of horses' hooves: dada-duh dada-duh. Four hooves land in a pattern such that two hooves almost overlap. Play the "giddy-up” rhythm on a piano
So remember the flying horses of the Valkyries? Change that rhythm only a tiny bit, from
Play the giddy-up rhythm, then change to Sicilian/Valkyrie rhythm
To ... and segue into Ride of the Valkyries.
and your horse is Airborne.
I guess the Valkyries knew that anything as primal as the dream of flight had to find expression in a prime number -- in three. But I think John Lienhard has one more comment on our need to bring our many forms of human expression to bear upon flight. And it’s clear that we will not limit those forms to words alone.